Dave's Bootleg Rant: Landcross Multiforce "Airplane Robot" If you're confused about the knockoff name, it's because the toy was carded on the same card as a Dug-On/The Brave knockoff which has a 747 as the main component. I got this through David Kolodny-Nagy, who posts his sales to a.t.t.marketplace with irregular frequency. CAPSULE Well, it's Landcross, from Transformers Victory, and it has some nifty gimmicks. But it depends on lots of tabs and slots, and the cheesy plastic and haphazard production values of this knockoff REALLY hurt the toy as a result. Mis-molded limbs, fragile pegs, heads which don't want to slide out, etc. The gestalt is almost poseable, but I was afraid it'd break rather than move. Only get if you REALLY want to see how Landcross Multiforce works. $15 + S&H from DKN. RANT The Multiforce is composed of six vehicles, each of which can turn into a rather boxy robot with stubby straight arms and locked-together legs. In the cartoon, they pair off into three sets (Wing and Waver, Mach and Tackle, Dash and Tacker) which merge to form larger robots (the individual robots are never seen in the cartoon), and can all get together to form Landcross, a somewhat spindly gestalt. Each vehicle is about 3-4 inches long, and the robot modes about that tall. The interesting point, and one I'd been misinformed on in the past, is that any pair can be put together in either order to form a robot, for a small army of possibilities (30, to be precise). Here's how it works: Each small robot has a chest region in which a pair of heads is hidden in vehicle mode. The two heads are one piece, with one head being able to push out the top of the chest in single mode, and the other being shoved out the bottom for merged mode. In theory, anyway. This cheap knockoff has heads which either won't slide at all without excessive force, or which fall right out. Anyway, the sides of this chest region have the stubby arms of the individual robot. On the bottom of the chest area are linked two long legs by a series of hinges and joints which are susceptible to breakage (one of mine already broke, in fact). Just pulling these down and separating them makes for the longer merged-form legs, or you can pull them all the way apart to make for arms. The hands are somewhat iffy on some of these, but all can at least kinda hold a gun. In theory, by leaving a pair hooked together, you could flip the merged robot upside down, fiddle with the limbs and pull out a new head to turn, say, Machtackle into Tacklemach. In practice, with this knockoff, you have to pull them back apart and fiddle around to get the new head deployed. The snap-together joints which hold these mergers (and parts of the full gestalt) together are VERY strong. They hold so solidly that every time I have to pull them apart, I'm seriously worried that the tabs will break rather than pull apart. Here's some individual notes on the six parts: Wing - This is a jetplane which forms the upper torso of Landcross. Your basic tailless delta wing plane, like the Gripen or Rafael. Transformation reminiscent of an Aerialbot, and that's not a complement. Waver - A hydrofoil boat with a rather ambitious transformation...so of course this is the one which broke already. Oh, it follows the same blueprint as the others, but has extra fiddly bits which move about and threaten to snap off. Dash - A sportscar with really big feet in robot mode. Didn't have any specific problems with this one. Tacker - A halftrack which, in this knockoff, has the holes drilled on the wrong side of his hands. I tried reversing the arms (which was a bad move, now they flop around and it's another thing to fix) and ended up drilling through to the other side of one of the hands so he can hold his gun. Mach - Shuttle, his wings come off and become Landcross's chestplate. Well, that presumes they can go ON in the first place. The pegs on Mach were too large for the holes on the wing, and when you add that the wing is all chromed (which always seems to make parts fit more poorly), it's a bit of a pain. I filed down the pegs, but the chrome keeps the wing from staying on well even with the pegs being barely small enough to shove the holes onto. This one also had holes in the wrong side of the hands, but since there aren't wheels on Mach's hands (like there are on Tacker's), I could just reverse the arms. Tackle - 4x4 SUV. For some reason, this was covered in a layer of dust, possibly from disintigrated flash inside the package. While all the others have their individual heads significantly smaller than their combined heads, Tackle has both heads the same big size. Landcross - Held together with so many pegs that if you lift him by the torso you'll lose at least one leg, and possibly even an arm if you move it too quickly. Not too bad-looking, even with the chrome and recoloring, but frankly, even Sixtrain's a hardier gestalt. Worth noting is that while at first glance it seems like you might be able to "Scramble City" this guy (i.e. put any figure in any position), you can't. Tacker and Tackle have to be the legs, Mach and Dash have to be the arms, Wing and Waver have to be upper and lower torso respectively. Also, while some of the gestalt kibble can be used by the components (Mach's wing, which can also be used as a shield if Mach is on top of a twosome, Tackle can mount a foot on his roof as a weapon), some parts can't, leaving spare kibble. And the chroming on most of the kibble makes it fit poorly or even fuse (Dash's pistol handle snapped off, sticking in Landcross's fist). Before you take Landcross apart, make good note of where everything goes. There's no directions, and there's not even package art to go by, since the card shows the wrong toy. Overall, if you're interested in putting in the work needed to bring this toy up to code, you might wanna put out the $19 Kolodny-Nagy's asking. The larger one he's offering for $30 + S&H might be a little better made, but is probably just bigger with the same problems. Not quite as bad as Roadkillcaesar, but a pretty cheap and cheesy knockoff. Dave Van Domelen, thank Primus for hot glue guns....