Studio Series 86.07 Slug w/Daniel Witwicky

Hi, welcome back to MythicTF’s. Over the past few months since I have started this blog all the figures I have done haven’t really been brand new, with the exception of Eris:Kultur obviously. Not to say most of these toys are old, most have come out within the past 3-4 years, but today’s figure is brand new as of writing this, so new that he has barely started showing up in most countries. I wasn’t even expecting to get this guy till October, but I got lucky with a listing on Walmart.ca and was able to get him early, or at least early by my standards, but enough beating around the bush let’s get prehistoric and look at Studio Series 86.07 Slag, I mean Slug.

Slug here is actually the second Dinobot to be released in the Studio Series 86 sub-line, the first being Grimlock, who I am sure we will get to eventually. Before we actually move on to the figure I feel like I should address the name issue here between Slag and Slug and why it was switched. Slag is his original name and to numerous people that is this character's name as that is what they grew up with but, as time went on, it was discovered that “slag” is a derogatory word in the UK and Europe, so Hasbro decided to change the name of the character to Slug. Some people may get unnecessarily mad at this name change, but it isn’t really that big of an issue, at least to me, because it is not like Slag was a major character with a lot of history and even if he was it is not like the name is that much different, they just switched a letter. Anyways let’s take a look at the figure shall we.

Starting as always with the head as always, and honestly I like it much more than I thought I would based on all the pictures I saw beforehand. I am still not the biggest fan of the fully red head and would have preferred a black head with a red or silver face, but this head is accurate to the G1 cartoon and that is the point of the SS86 toyline, but like I said I like the red more than I thought. I think that there are a substantial amount of details here that would have gotten lost had they used black instead. The only non red parts on the entire face are the rather large metallic blue eyes which really stand out. The head itself is not actually a full head because of how he transforms, it is more of a face with a slope on the back, which is fine since you don’t really see the back of the head thanks to his iconic dino head hood. Speaking of the hood, it does make it a little difficult to maneuver the head but there is sufficient space to get your fingers in there to move it around. You can actually move the head quite a bit thanks to the ball joint it’s on, plus the neck panel can move for some extra up and down action, although the downside of that is that that panel doesn’t lock in so you can up can end up sinking his head into his chest a little without noticing.

Slug here has a rather wide torso, or at the very least it is visually wide. There are multiple factors to this and not all of them are chest related, but since we're here we might as well look at the chest. To start off we have this big grey centerpiece which, on the original toy was the lower jaw of the dino. Here it is clearly a faux part but it stands out REALLY nicely against the primarily red torso, and reversely the Auto-badge stands out really well against the grey. Moving on outwards to the shoulders sections. They are these large red cylindrical chunks, which is one of the main reasons he looks so wide, another one being the slopes tapering to the waist not going out far enough so it looks like the torso stops perpendicular to them and then the shoulder starts, there is even an indent in the molding that helps sells that “illusion”. Speaking of molded details, it all looks very nice and stands out pretty well against the red plastic, and most, if not all, of it is based on the details from the G1 toy which is a nice touch, and blends the cartoon and toy styles very well. I especially love all the details on the inside of the back wings. Since we're talking about the back wings, let's talk about the backpack as a whole cause there is a lot here, but all things considered, it is very compact. It does have the whole dino tail hanging off his back but it looks a lot better and compacts much more than the initial pictures made it appear. It does have a few gaps you can see from the side, nothing major though and it is all very secure.

Moving on to the arms, which are the other main reason he seems wide. They are very good with all the right articulation; Hand rotation, double hinge elbow, full bicep rotation, 90 degree outward movement and full shoulder rotation(the ratchets of which are incredible). I feel like the arms themselves should be both slightly longer and bulkier. When fully straightened the arms just barely make it a third of the way down the thigh, and I think if you made them bulkier they would stand out more from the body instead of extensions in a different color. Luckily these complaints are only really visible when his arms are straight, if you pose them they aren’t really noticeable.

Now let's look at the legs, which are super chunky in multiple ways. The waist is this large brick with a rotation, and full outward, forward and backwards movement in the hips, and while the tail does interfere slightly, it is not as much as you might think and it can be moved out of the way pretty easily. Thighs are a bit short but in comparison to the rest of the legs but not enough where it is a flaw, and I do really love the blue and green on the knees, keeping with the toy inspired details. Surprisingly, thanks to transformation, Slug has double-jointed knees and both joints are ratcheted, although this does cause a minor issue of the thighs not lining up to the lower legs correctly, but again minor issue. Now we get to the main event, these chunky knee-high boots with gold painted toes and mechanical detail galore, but the best part about these has to be the rear dino mode legs that collapse in on themselves and fold around to fill in the inner leg. The engineering here actually allows you to fold them out so you can homage the G1 toy even more, obviously this brings the downside of hollowness on the inside of the legs. He does have some exceptional ankle tilt, going fully 90 degrees, but that isn’t something we haven’t seen before, especially over the last 2-3 years.

Obviously before looking at the transformation and Dino mode, we have to look at his accessories, of which there are two. First up is his gun, which is a pretty nice single barreled rifle painted in the same light grey as the chestplate, and it can be held in either hand, or stored on the back, or oddly enough plugged into the shoulder. Our second accessory can also be plugged into the shoulder, but this one plugs into the top instead of the side. Yep, it is time to look at the weirdest accessory for this guy to come with, Daniel Witwicky in his exo-suit. Daniel here is very well detailed and looks like he did in the 86 film, with the exception of anything actually telling us this is Daniel other than name. For all we know this could be Spike or just an empty exo-suit and either option would make just as much sense coming with Slug as Daniel. The only articulation on this figure is the ball joints at the shoulders and hips, the latter being pretty pointless thanks to the legs being permanently bent 90 degrees. To the point where it makes him hard to stand up on his own. Like I mentioned he can plug into the top of Slug’s shoulder and ride up there if you would like, and that is pretty much it for integration at least for robot mode.

Transformation is neat, especially the legs, since they collapse together to become the entire back end of the dino and the way the chest opens up to reveal the lower jaw is extremely satisfying. This mode is overflowing with molded detail and while we saw most of it in robot mode it is all concentrated together now into this giant mechanical mass. I especially love the faux feet on his back to give him his classic look without sacrificing anything in the legs overall design. Taking a quick look at the head, and it is your classic triceratops head with the spake mane, forehead horns and singular nose spike, all with some mid 80’s mechanical flair. The head itself is done up in a nice brilliant gold and, just like the robot head, the metallic blue eyes really capture your attention from almost every visible angle. The lower jaw can open up and there is even a blast effect port in the mouth so you can make him breath fire(I unfortunately don’t have good enough effect parts to replicate this, so I did the best I could). Because of how the dino head is engineered he can’t look up at all so he just breathe fire at what is on the floor directly in front of him. Actually he doesn’t have much going on the way of articulation in this mode, the front legs obviously have everything the arms had, since that is what they are, but the back legs really only have hip movement. I mean you can use the knee and ankle joint there thanks to the transformation joints but they don’t look all that convincing. Both of the accessories can be used in this mode, the gun actually stores in the tail, giving him a properly tapered tail. Meanwhile Daniel/Spike/the Exo-suit can ride Slug thanks to the two tabs just behind the spike mane.

Overall I think SS86 Slug is an EXCELLENT figure with a couple flaws that keep him from being as good as he could have been. I am thinking he gets a very respectable 8/10. I think that is everything covered with Slug here, I do hope I can get to SS86 Grimlock sooner rather than later but with a lot of stuff releasing and arriving in the next couple months I am not quite sure that will happen, only time will tell. As always with every blog post the accompanying photo gallery is up so check it out if you would like and next week we keep the dinobot theme but probably not in the way you're thinking. See you then.