Devastator Dilemma

Toys/Games

March 30, 2017 By Joshua Ching

I was born in 1986 so I missed out on the awesomeness of Transformers when they first came out. Lucky for me and the rest of my generation Hasbro decided to bring back Transformers in 1992 under the name Transformers: Generation 2. These were essentially just rebroadcasts of the original ’80s cartoon spliced with early ’90s CGI animations.

Want to see how awesome those early ’90s CGI animations were? Here’s the intro featuring Optimus Prime kicking the crap out of Ramjet.

By today’s standards this looks like something that a anybody could make in a elementary school computer lab but to a 6 year old kid in 1992 this was the shit right here.

Aside from the cartoon Hasbro also recolored a few of the toys and rereleased them under the Transformers: Generation 2 name.

1 of the commercials I’ll always remember back then was the one that was for the Dinobots and Constructicons. That commercial was the shit, even without the awesome early ’90s CGI that stuff could sell it self. You had freakin’ robot dinosaurs, and you had construction vehicles that transform into robots and combine into a giant robot. This was about a year before Power Rangers but this was also after Voltron so I was well aware of robots combining to make bigger robots and how awesome this idea was.

After seeing this commercial I wanted everything they featured. I really wanted a Grimlock, although I was never able to find one anywhere. I had Slag, the Triceratops but the was the only Dinobot I got. I do remember after watching the cartoon I was hoping they would release a Swoop cause he was a pterodactyl and I thought he was awesome cause he could fly but they never did.

As for the Constructicons, there were six different ones and they were all sold separately at the time. I asked my parents for some and at the time they got me two of them: Scrapper, the front-end loader who formed one of the legs and Scavenger, the excavator who was one of the arms. My parents told me they’d get me the rest of them later but being a child with a short attention span we never got around to it. In the end I got one more Constructicon; Bonecrusher, the bulldozer who was the other arm. Three out of six, not nearly enough to put together Devastator.

Fast forward a little over 20 years later, and I’m surfing Facebook checking out all the toy exclusives that will be available at San Diego Comic Con 2015 and one of the things Hasbro is selling is a giant Devastator set. This thing is easily at least twice as big as any other Devastator set that was released before and best of all, it’s all six Constructicons in one set.

San Diego Comic Con is something I’ve been wanting to go to for years but unfortunately my inability to check my email for the official Comic Con newsletter on a regular basis and my inability to pay to attention to ticket sale dates kept me from going. I was close to going in 2014 when I was trying to win tickets from KROQ, a local radio station, but me accidentally hit disconnect on my phone and then me getting a bullshit question in their trivia game ruined it for me, but I didn’t let that get me down. I was determined to try again. Anyway it’s the Summer of 2015 and it’s Comic Con week and once again KROQ is giving away tickets, and I am calling everyday trying to get through to win tickets and I guess this is the year the universe gives me a break. On the very last day they were giving tickets I am the very last caller they take. They’re playing another trivia game to get in, I answer my question correctly I am entered into the drawing and I end up winning myself a pair of 2015 San Diego Comic Con tickets.

While walking around San Diego Comic Con I found myself near the Hasbro booth and I see they have Devastators in stock so I just walk up and buy one and for a few minutes I’m a happy a six year old.

I later learned that I got pretty lucky when I got my Devastator a guy I bumped into and a coworker who was at Comic Con told me they both bought Devastators on the first day of Comic Con and they had to jump through so many hoops to them, waiting for hours just to get tickets so they could wait in another line.

I still have my Devastator. It’s just sitting on my shelf, in the box. I opened it because the one they gave me the instruction manual slid in front of the plastic window in front so you can’t see Devastator but other than that I never took it out of the box. I told myself that I bought it as an investment. That I would sit on it for a while and once I knew I could make some money off of it I’d go sell it, that’s why I never took it out of the box. Sometimes when I think about having it I’m kind of tempted to take it out of the box and play with it, to be taken back to happier times when I’m a kid without a care in the world. I think If I had the space for it I’d take it out and put it on display and every once in a while I’d grab it off that shelf and I’ll play with it. I know it would lose value once I take it out but part of me is thinking, “Fuck it. What’s the point of having if I can’t enjoy it.” I know I could probably put it back in the box when I’m done playing with it but honestly looking at the packaging it looks like one of those set ups with twist ties where it would be a bitch to put back.

Until the day I have space for it I guess it’ll just have to continue sitting in that box where all I can do is look at it.

Here’s Devastator how I bought it. After buying it I learned that Hasbro widely released the giant Devastators as part of their Combiner Wars series. However to differentiate the Comic Con exclusive version from the regular versions the Comic Con version had different packaging which includes this extra sleeve.

Here’s what the back of the sleeve looks like. It’s minimalistic but it’s straight and to the point.

Here’s the actual box underneath the sleeve. It was a nice touch to make the flap look like the basket on a construction vehicle

And here he is, Devastator. I regret not taking a picture of it next to something so you can get the scale of how big this thing is.

Close up on his face. Look what a mean mothefucker he is.

I really don’t understand why he needs the big shiny purple chest plate thing. In vehicle form that chestplate becomes a wing for Scrapper. I know they’re alien robots but still why would a front loader need a wing?