Hasbro has a long history of doing repaints of figures that improve certain aspects of the product while also annoying the shit out of early adopters. The latest in this line of prestigious figures is the Studio '86 Blast and Eject set, sold here in Canada as a Toys R Us exclusive, a Target exclusive in the US, and I have no idea outside these areas. To be fair, this figure probably annoyed more people than normal, because not only does it feature changes that should have been done in the first place, but the price also jumped a bit.
Blaster is an upgrade to the figure introduced in the Kingdom line, IIRC. The predominant changes are to the chest window and the face, along with Eject being made from plastic that isn't destined to self destruct in a few years time. Other than that, there's also his gun included in the package.
I have to admit, it was neat handling a Blaster figure for the first time since '86 or so. Never got the reissues, though I was tempted, and never picked up any of the other iterations over the years, regardless of whether or not it was a repurposed body (I even managed to skip the Binaltech version). While the actual transformations are different, both Blaster and Eject still turn into what you'd expect, a Boombox and a Cassette tape. As this is part of the Studio 86 line up, aesthetically the colours certainly look more show accurate than previous iterations.
Head sculpt is nice - certainly one that I approve of even if the expression seems a bit odd. You'll also notice that designers gave the right hand an extended Index finger, undoubtedly to recreate scenes where Blaster is pressing the eject button on his deck door to unleash the circus midgets he has contained within. The issue, however, that the figure lacks the actual articulation to pull that pose off.
Articulation for the pair is basically what you'd expect it to be, or at least for the most part. Blaster does not have rotating wrists, which would have been very helpful especially with that one hand. Eject really could have used a waist and other than costs I really can't see anything Engineering wise that resulted in the figure being waist less. Ankle tilts on Blaster are nice, but it is side tilt only. Overall, as typical, you should be OK with regards to your general posing so long as you're not too demanding.
Transformation into the respective alt modes is relatively straight forward, with Blaster admittedly more complicated than yesteryear. Furthermore, due to QC issues, Blaster can end up a bit warped looking - you can probably make out from the photo that the chest door is slightly askew. The other thing is that while Blaster certainly resembles his G1 look, anyone who has ever seen what an audio cassette looks like will instantly recognize that Eject does not look anything like one at all.
Paint Application wise, lets be honest, this isn't winning any awards because quite frankly, it's the usual minimal amount of paint, and even then they skipped spots, such as the other knob in alt mode for Blaster. Credit is given that at least the paint apps themselves are nice and clean, with no visible overspray or other visual artifacts. On Eject, it's basically the non-Blue surfaces that got painted, again nice and sharp.
Build Quality wise, it's really the misalignment issues Blaster experiences. Beyond that, things are pretty typical in terms of finish and general joint performance. The speakers on the shins of the robot mode can be rotated to reveal... I guess I'd call them more 80s speakers, with fancy grille bars on the front of them. The spring used to open the chest door appears to be sufficiently robust.
So when it comes to Studio 86 Blaster, that's really about it. Overall, it's a neat puzzle box that allows one multiple modes of play (though probably slightly less for us unless people still walk around with undersized Boomboxes), and of course it's nice to revisit one of the greatest gimmicks of 80's, namely having tiny soldiers living inside your body. While it's unfortunate that these cosmetic upgrades, in particular the lack of translucent plastic, came this late in the game, at least it happened. A pretty typical and average Mainline release, it's really about whether or not you want to go through the trouble to find this.
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