Dave's Knockoff Rant: Transformable Robot Warrior - unknown knockoff Jumbo Jet Transformable - Fire Dug-On knockoff Yep, the Christmas season toys are starting to hit the Big Lots, Odd Lots, ItzaDeal type stores out there, and once again there's a fairly nifty Takara gestalt knockoff in the mix. CAPSULES Robot Warrior: Pretty cheesy and floppy, splits apart into a bird and a bullet train, comes with a sword that it can't hold anywhere. But it's only $1.99, so it's worth getting if you have a closeout store nearby. Jumbo Jet "Dagwon": Sloppy paint job, and a little loose in places as you'd expect from a knockoff. But it's a lot sturdier than many knockoffs and didn't require any kitbashing just to hold together. Pretty cool, especially at the price it's at. Recommended. $7.99 at Odd Lots (and similar stores). RANTS Bird/Train Bot: The card has no instructions on the back and all the art is Gundam ripoff stuff, so there's no indication where this is from, although I think I've seen pictures of this guy alongside other Takara knockoffs. In merged mode, it's 8" (20cm) tall at the head, a little taller overall depending on how you orient the wings and bird tail. The head turns, the legs spread apart, and the arms have very good articulation, mainly because they turn into the bird's legs. Two planes of articulation on each shoulder, an upper arm swivel, elbows (albeit pointed the wrong way), and claw hands that can open and close. The figure comes packaged with a sword, but there's really no place on the toy to put the sword, so it's probably from a different toy. Split apart, the legs oppose by 180 degrees to result in a bullet train. There's guns on the legs which can be pointed to the front and back, but they can't be put on top, or placed on either side of just the front half of the train. Also, the train only looks even partly complete from one side, as hip flaps close some of the gap. The train is 11" (27cm) long and may have had rolling wheels in the original form, but the knockoff doesn't. The upper body becomes a passable robot bird, but the head (which hangs as a buttpack in robot mode) doesn't stay in position very well, thanks to the poor plastic quality. It's hard to tell how to orient the legs due to the lack of instructions, plus the fact that they don't stay well in ANY orientation. The result is a robo-bird on really oversized legs, though. Stands roughly 4" (10cm) tall with a 8" (20cm) wingspan, 5" (13cm) from beak to tail tip. Dagwon: I call this knockoff Dagwon because that's what the stickers on it say. Poor transliteration of Dug-On. It's a knockoff of Fire Dug-On, which IIRC is from the second-last series of Da Garn before Takara bought into Beast Wars. WARNING: this toy is packaged two ways, in jet mode and in robot mode. Don't buy both versions thinking them to be two different toys. Instructions: Yep, this one has instructions, which are pretty good copies from the original ones. There don't seem to be any missing bits. The only unclear part in the instructions is the location of the landing gear, but once you go in for the robot head you find the landing gear. Jet: A very nice looking jumbo jet, just over a foot long (31cm) and with a wingspan just under a foot (29cm). It does suffer from incredible undercarriage garbage, not just from the robot chestplate, but also from the huge "cargo carriers" which become Fire Dug-On's legs. A big part of the jet body and wings are kinda floppy, since there's no tab for them to snap onto in jet mode. I suspect the original toy just had good tolerances and used friction to keep the thing together. It's quite stable if picked up by the nose, though. Each jet engine is a missile launcher, firing child-unsafe 1.5" (4cm) missiles using the Cyberjet pressure launch system. However, due to the plastics used in this knockoff, the missiles don't always even clear the launchers. Base Mode: Split open the front end of the jet, lift the wings and pull the cargo cannisters to the sides, and you get a base that can launch the three smaller vehicles. Not terribly impressive, but these ad hoc Micromaster-style bases rarely do. Micro Vehicles: Stored in the cargo pods are two rescue vehicles, an ambulance and a fire truck. These become the HANDS of the larger robot. This one goes beyond Voltron Syndrome and all the way to SDF-1 Syndrome. Neither vehicle turns into a robot, and the cheesy construction here means they hardly roll along on their own. The ambulance doesn't do much on its own, but the fire truck as a movable and extendable ladder (with a blade in it that becomes one of the weapons of Fire Dug-On). The ambulance is 2" (5cm) long, the fire engine is 2.5" (6cm) with maximum ladder-blade extension of just under 5" (12cm). The fire engine compresses to match the ambulance's size in fist mode. Command Car: Dug-On is mainly about piloted vehicles, and in this case there's a smaller police car vehicle that the pilot rides in. In car mode, this 3" (7cm) long car can store in the middle of the jet or the chest of the robot. There's a launching ramp for base mode, although the car doesn't roll in all the way on its own in this knockoff. Transformation is like a backwards version of the G2 car Windbreaker, with pieces pulling apart and shifting down to become the shoulders. The resulting robot is 3.75" (9cm) tall and can bend its elbows and flap its arms up and down. It doesn't stand too well, though. It has a small pistol which it holds in Stunticon manner. In robot mode, it can sit in the gap behind Fire Dug-On's head. Fire Dug-On: Typical of Takara products of the early 1990s, the robot stands 10" (25cm) tall at the head, add another inch or two for the wings and swivel-mounted engines...but it has the poseability of a brick with arms. The arms can bend at the elbow or flap out a bit, plus turn some at the shoulder, although this is hindered by the huge (4" long) shoulderpads. It carries a 6" (15cm) long sword, has the previously mentioned ladder blade, and can fire all four engine-launchers. The arms hold on somewhat loosely, but will stay on by themselves (I seem to recall seeing pictures in an old TV Magazine of Fire Dug-On launching his fists as missiles, so the original toy may have had spring launchers for the hands, there seem to be some remains of such a gimmick). Unlike many knockoffs, this one is colored pretty well, mainly in red, white and black, with some grey parts and gold chrome. From a few feet away, it looks pretty good, in fact. There's a few bits that were obviously glued together sloppily, some mis-aligned stickers, some sloppy painting, but it's easily one of the better looking cheap knockoffs I've seen. It's up there with last year's combiner, a Draias knockoff. Dave Van Domelen, does kinda wish there was a place to put the pistol and sword in vehicle modes....