I picked up barricade yesterday at target.. no combinor parts though When i got him home i openned him up.

ALT MODE
At first I wasn't too impressed with the Alt mode... he has the IronHide problem of Head visability. But the colors were unique and being from an area heavy in military vehicles, i knew this could pass for one of them easily. He has some articulation in this mode with his missle ports (of which no missles actually fire). The thing that stands out in this mold is the level of details in the mold. There is no flat blan surface on this vehicle.

TRANSFORMATION
Easy as pie


ROBOT MODE
This is where this robot shines! Most of the Energon combinors have pretty generic head molds and even the ones that don't are hardly different from things we've seen in the past. But Barricades head mold is completely new and different and cool as hell! He also doesn't suffer from the blandness of Storm Jet, or the one handedness of Steam Hammer. As for posabilty; knees, mid thigh, full range hip, waste, neck (left and right) full range shoulders, mid upper arm, and elbows. Needless to say he can do some pretty fantastic poses. And to top it all off, his abdoman bares some homagy goodness towards his predacessor Onslaught.

I think that this guy has taken over as my new favorite Energon Deluxe.


10 out of 10

COngrats on the finding Opp. Now how bout some pics for us?

I found Barricade a couple days ago as well. I guess I can spend this morning taking pics.

Quick note: The back half of Barricade does have his head exposed... So just do what I did, and flip it. Seriously, it looks like a fuel tank or ammo drum or something when you can't see the face itself.

Oh.. and for the robot mode, be sure to have the side panels of the front cab slightly at an angle. You'll break it trying to make it all uniform. I'll explain in pics in a bit.

Athenor

yeah it took me a second to realize but you have to do to them what you have to do to the side panels on Bulkhead in robot mode

Got mine yesterday too. he head definitely was stand-out.

He does suffer a bit from backpack-itis, but pretty poseable otherwise.

Well, here we go, my pics of Barricade.

First up are a couple of his vehicle mode. I tried to show some interesting notes: The head and the missile racks. If you don't like the screws visible on the missile racks, it's not terribly diffucult to rotate them.








Next up is Barricade himself, deciding to have a little victory celebration...

I draw your attention to his upper legs/hips. Note the yellow? That is the ONLY paint app difference I have noticed between the SL and Energon versions, other than the body color being a dark blue. On the US one, the upper part, next to the hip is colored. on the SL one, the lower part is colored. It makes a difference in Bruticus, by giving his legs a bit more color, instead of flat black.






Next up is a shot of Barricade's backpack. He actually isn't terribly hard to pose, thanks to some extensions on his heels for balance. I am posting this to point out how you MUST have the side panels slightly outwards, as this is something NOT described in Barricade's US instructions.






Next up is Bruticus... but, of course, a gestalt is nothing without his limbs... He's not feeling very... comfortable, so to speak.







But, thanks to Superion and Buildtron loaning him some help......







... I'd also like to take this moment to say that despite Superion's legs being extremely stable, they just don't -look- right on anyone but Superion.

Athenor

Hey-

on the side panels issue, if you look at those double-hinged joints those panels can be locked slightly out and toward the vehicular nose and THEN it fits more flush.

You're right, you can do that, but it leaves a gap between teh backpack and Barricade's torso that I'm not fond of. Moreover, with it as I have it now, the panels follow the contour of the black piece nearly perfectly, so I figured that was the right way to do it.

The only important part is that you don't have those side panels attached to anything, or you'll break it if you try to force the black part into the slot..

(grr, need more pictures for reference, but I like my pic of Bruticus giving Skyblast the scare of his feeble life! I haven't moved him since I took the pic)

Athenor

just noticed he's posed on top of HP & The Order of the Pheonix.. there's a few of us Hogwarts fans on here

What do you guys think about the Leia buns and the "Alt Smokescreen" color scheme?

Thanks a lot. Now I'll think of this everytime I look at him. Just like Alt/BT Swindle and his "purple speedo".

BTW, rar.

I figured he just had a really big set of headphones on so he could jam out while blwoing stuff up.... hadn't thought of them as Leia Buns.

First, of course I saw it initially as "Leia buns"....

However, IMHO they're more like radio headphones. Ever seen the military? You can always tell the guy either blowing stuff up, getting communications through, or so on based on their headphones. And this guy's appears to be made out of steel.

It makes him look like a football player. And definitely NOT someone I wanna mess with. I mean, just look at what he did to Skyblast! That just ain't right!


(Yes, that is the Order of the Phoenix, cuz my bed wasn't stable enough for the pose, and it was the nearest sturdy thing. I stopped reading for a while because I just couldn't take Prof. Umbridge, but after some nagging from a good friend whom I -introduced- to the HP books, I'm back in and 300 pages from the end. You'll also notice the feet of my Berserk Fury behind Bruticus... Once I get in some more packages and setup things properly, I'll re-photograph my collections. =) )

Athenor

I've been waiting for this figure for a while now and the last place I expected to find it was at K-mart.
Front:

Back:

Alt. Mode:


Bot Mode:


Side-

Combiner Mode:
Front-


Back-

This is a great figure, looks great in all modes. I did have a problem with the Combiner head, just pushing down a little bit hard on it will force the head and the piece it is on to come off. All in all I would consider this as my favorite deluxe figure, next to Rodimus.

Just picked one up at Target!

Same here!

Just got him a few days ago at Wal-mart. He's pretty sweet, I just can't get behind that head of his. Not Bruticus' head, Barricade's. That Princess Leia look just doesn't work on robots, especially male robots...

Great figure overall and he's probably the best torso among the E-combiners. I just really hate his head.

i want one

You know, my biggest disappointment for these combiners is that they're not 'Giants' at all. Yeah, they're big, like Megs and Super Prime, but they're not enormous like Tidalwave or OmegaS/S

If they had made the 1-4 parts Deluxe sized and the #5s all mega (or whatever Ironhide, et al is) then they'd be much better IMHO

I've seen gestalts get that big, in other toy lines.

Truth of the matter is, above a certain point they lose their play value. As in, they start getting too heavy for their joints, or their joint mechanisms and connectors take up so much room that the other forms are sacrificed. Now, with the way the Energon combiners are based, they could probably have gone just a bit larger.. but not by much.

Oh, and for the record, when has there -ever- been a TF gestalt the size of Omega Supreme?

Athenor

Yep, the head is the only thing that leaves me cold. First of all, its like you said about the princess leia look. I think it looks like he has a pair of lawnmower tires on each side of his head, like if his body blows up maybe his head can crank up and zip off to go get a new one built or something. The other thing is that its plainly visible in vehicle mode.

Outside of that, Barricade is the best of the torso guys. Steamhammer just sucks ass, and Storm Jet is ok, but I hate those little chunks of tan they threw in on his color scheme, throws the whole thing off.

His head is a bit odd at first, but he grows on ya. I think he's a great figure.

i wasn't too big on his US brighter blue colors....i've already got the Japanese release and I must say, I like the darker color scheme (and show accurate) much better. He just looks too bright to be menacing enough for my taste. Makes me glad I grabbed the japanese version.

-Jin

Wait a sec.

The US one is the -brighter- one? Jeez, in all of Remy's pics, he was an aqua/green metallic flake color... Whereas the US one is a dark (almost too dark) blue with just a hint of green... In fact, even the missile tubes are kinda a mustard yellow/green color, whereas Remy had them looking brighter...

Perhaps it was the flash, but still...

Athenor

Looks good.. but I'm not feeling those colors. He'd look better in camo, I think..