Let’s talk about Insecticon re-issues. Specifically, let’s talk about the Legacy and Legacy Evolution series. Why, you may ask? You may not know this, but I name my computers after Transformers, and have for a long, long time. This used to be A Thing among nerds. For instance, a friend of mine named all of his computers after South Park characters. Anywho, I had a quick round of three computers (a laptop, a Roku replacement, and a streaming machine for while I’m working on servers in the basement), and I named them all after G1 Insecticons. If I like the Transformer enough to name a computer after it, I usually also enjoy collecting a toy of it. In a stroke of luck, this happened during the Legacy and Legacy Evolution releases, so I picked Kickback up during one of Ace of Hearts‘ Target adventures.

While the transformation is more complex than the G1 version of the toy, it’s still pretty straightforward. There’s a hip rotation, and there’s some feet repositioning, and there’s some neck twisting. Nothing surprising, and nothing difficult.

The joints are stiff enough to be able to pose the figure and leave him that way, and there are enough of them that there’s plenty of articulation. Articulation and detail – in both modes – are where this re-issue shine. In those ways, it is absolutely an improvement on the original 1980’s toy. In every other way, it’s faithful to the original, and a worthy update.