#glacialord

Fansproject Retro Future Glacialord Set

I can only describe this set of figures as Toy Art. The amount of minute details and extra polishes these releases were given to make them feel like something that came out of the 80s is amazing, and is one of the few toys I’ve ever gotten that I wanted to leave pristine in package. From the style of articulation, to the Styrofoam trays, to the intentional box damage, this was a passion project that should have recieved more recognition when it released in 2014.

The Good: I can’t emphasize enough how much of an experience these toys are, but if you don’t care about the packaging, or don’t want to be spoiled to the experience, I added a bolded section you can skip to below. Just opening them is incredibly enthralling. Each box has different types of faux wear-and-tear on them to make them look aged, as if they were actually produced in the 80s, save for Megazero (the Megacero/Stag) who is made to look like a newer Korean issue. Once they’re open, each is packed in a Styrofoam tray and their Core Masters are inside small cards (which even have old safety warnings on the back).

For all but Megazero, they have a few of their stickers already applied to simulate that this is a preowned toy. They have simple, but easy enough to understand instructions reminiscent of those of the time that quickly detail their transformations from beast to robot to limb. Tusker’s instructions are even purposefully folded incorrectly to make them seem used.

Skip Here: Onto the toys themselves, all the limb bots are rather simple. While they all have at least one minor modern engineering trick to them, you could easily transform all of them without instructions. They all only have arm rotations for posability (with Tusker having slightly more), but so did the toys they’re emulating. Each member of the Glacialbots has a Core Master (at least that’s what I think they’re called) that forms the head and torso of the robot modes. There’s even specific engineering that allows each of them to ride on top of their respective animals, or transform without needing to be removed. And like Head Masters before them, they’re interchangeable.

Despite the instructions specifying certain robots to certain limbs, Glacialord is a Scramble City Combiner, meaning each robot can form either a leg OR arm for a bit of interplay. I’ve also seen images online that suggest the ports on Tusker’s torso mode are compatible with similar combiners from the 80s. Oh, and Tailclub, who is usually a leg, has a hidden elbow bend as an arm.

I will also add here that, currently, Glacialord as a set is very cheap if you know where to look. It originally retailed for around $300, but I managed to pick everyone up for around $75. It’s well worth that price for the experience alone.

The Bad: While I do shower this toy with heaps of praise, it has some issues. Mainly Tusker, the Mammoth. A lot of his joints are very tight, to the point that I thought I was going to break things on several occasions when transforming him for the first time. The knees on the Core Masters, too, have a similar issue. They loosen up a bit as you play with them, but I’m still nervous at times. Tusker, again, has a few friction parts that move around when you don’t want them to, like his forelimbs in beast mode and head in combined mode.

The Ugly: It didn’t sell. And that’s nothing to do with the toy, it’s the marketplace it was released in. I’ve managed to avoid mentioning Transformers up until now, but Fansproject is one of the companies that produces toys that resemble Transformers characters without the consent of their parent companies. However, Fansproject is unique among those companies for trying to branch out and produce their own original characters, like Glacialord. The problem is, when released, the people buying from that marketplace were only interested in feeding their own nostalgia for characters and not style, and still are for the most part, causing the entire Retro Future line to be scrapped after getting out a single complete toy.

It’s the Glacialords, who combine to form Glacialord! I’ve been very interested in FansProject’s thorough throwback for a while now, but the out-there price pointedly made it a non-starter for me. Over two-hundred bucks for pure novelty is quite a bit, after all. But knocked down to just sixty in TFSource’s Cyber Monday sale? That is extremely deal-with-able. Which means I can finally get into these guys and what they’re all about.

So the main thing you need to understand about the Glacialords is…they’re a joke. A goof. A ridiculous funny frivolence at the expense of G1 Transformers and the very experience of vintage toy collecting. I was giggling like an idiot just taking them out of the shipping box, sporting as they do all-too-accurate bygone elements like Tusker’s box being discolored and faded all the way around, or Megazero’s odd-one-out Sonokong-style packaging. They’re packed in Styrofoam inserts, they come with half their stickers already applied. Even the instruction booklets are in on the gag, down to a typo in Tusker’s that I straight-up can’t be sure is intentional or not. That’s a great sell. I just about lost it when I got to Megazero’s sticker sheet and saw his was in a different format to allot for the fact that as a ‘Korean’ version, he didn’t come with any of his stickers attached. Brilliant.

Now I believe the high concept here is supposed to be ‘What if the Autobots had a Combiner team opposite the Seacons?’. So you’ve got this esoteric, color-coordinated group themed on prehistoric mammals, and as the Seacons were a Targetmaster Combiner team, these guys get to be the ambitious idea of a Headmaster Combiner team. Each comes with a little mini-robot (ostensibly the actual character being sold while the transforming beast is just the ‘body’ they slot into) that can fold up and plug in to complete the transformation to robot mode. You can actually convert them between beast and robot modes without removing the head-robot, but if you do, they’ve all got slots in their beast-backs to let them ride on. It’s a great little hypothetical idea of how the gimmick might have been adapted in this context, and it works with all the pratfalls you might expect from the time, like Tusker’s silly flip-up flat-face.

Right, so the individual guys. As blocky tributes to times gone by, they’re faithful in ways you’ll recognize and be amused by the more you’re familiar with old G1 Transformers. Tailclub, for instance, transforms into a Deodicrus with a conversion that involves pulling off nearly all his bits except for his legs. His beast head flips out a spike and combines with his tail into the nominal club. In fact, all these guys detach their animal heads to form weapons (well, Tusker just uses his trunk, but still), an additional interesting through-line that spins on the implied Headmaster gimmick. Some are ornate and clever, like Megazero’s antlers clicking together so he’s got a big sword, while others are simpler, with Razorspike just holding his wooly rhino head with the horn pointed forward. Big boss Tusker gets the most elaborate transformation of all of them, naturally, as well as a shield made out of the Combiner’s chestplate.

There are some decided concessions to modern standards that push this set of dudes past ‘real’ G1 Combiners. The big ‘bot’s fists have dedicated uncombined storage, stuck as they are in Tusker’s forelegs. And the foot parts are involved in the animal modes for Tailclub and Razorspike, who can also use them as shields. It’s a nice bit of thought-out design in service of eliminating some of the parts of classic toys we have to admit we didn’t really enjoy. As well, the plastic these things are made out of is of that particular ‘third-party’ quality that you can feel to the touch, and the stickers are above and beyond the old foil affairs they’re emulating. These are all fine by me, this thing is a knowing tribute to the figures of yesteryear, and it doesn’t need to be a perfect emulation if it would be detrimental to the product itself in the long run.

Actually combining these frozen fellows reveals a few more well-thought-out elements of the experience. Though they’ve got the traditional head-shape, actually connecting via the Headmaster-heads would absolutely be a losing proposition for the stability of this thing. So the chests on these guys all rotate around (with the Headmasters still attached) to expose solid, dedicated combiner pegs. From there it’s your usual Scramble-City stick-together. There’s an implicitly intended combination of who’s supposed to be arms and legs, but you can mix-and-match if you so wish.

And the combined form of Glacialord is…well, honestly, it’s great. It’s absolutely stupid and ridiculous, fitting perfectly with the G1 Combiner aesthetic while being a completely original design. He definitely feels a bit more solid than those older guys, owing to his dense plastic and tighter connective quality control. But he’s got all the distinctive delightful elements, like the mismatched-angle animal heads on his knees, or the inner-hollow fists, or the combined weapon made of only some of the little guys’ weapons. And I really love some of his personal flourishes, like the faux-proto-Magnaboss tusks, or the way all the mammoth feet front-face to reveal rocket pods. I need to get out some of the actual G1 Combiners I own to see how he pairs with them, or how compatible the limbs are between them.

So as a concept, an irreverent tribute such as they are, the Glacialords are pretty well-executed. They’re fun to fiddle with in the same way actual G1 toys are, and FansProject was clearly having a blast putting them together; That overt packaging alone is worth storing somehow. I don’t know that a good gag like this is worth the default $200.00 asking price, that is a ton to pay for a joke, even a fun one. He’s still on sale, though not quite as low as Cyber Monday, over at TFSource, down to 80 bucks. It’s up to you if that’s worth checking him out at. But this bunch are definitely worth their own existence. It’s so cool to see a Third-Party company come up with something effectively completely new like this, and frankly nail the execution. Moreso than so many recreated childhood favorite characters, this feels like a labor of love for the property and hobby- It gets what was fun about original Transformers.  I’d say that’s worth a look.