Twin Twist

I swear I'm such a sucker for auto-transformation gimmicks. I've spoken before about my love of this gimmick previously when I reviewed Runamuck. My love of this started with Twin Twist.

Twin Twist has a pretty rich history as a character, but it's mostly recent. He was never used in any U.S. fiction that I could find during the Marvel run. He appeared in the Marvel U.K. run, but that was about it. He was a Wrecker back then and eventually fell to Galvatron.

Having some U.K. fiction is nice, but what I've always liked about Twin Twist was his tech spec. Twin Twist's tech spec paints him as something of a bloodthirsty maniac. According to his bio, he has no problem attacking Decepticons or a lamppost. There's even a mention if his uncontrollable nature. That screams berserker rage to me. As a kid I had my Twin Twist attack anything and everything. Fun stuff.

While researching this post, I ran across a few interesting items on the TFWiki. One of those is this animation model for Twin Twist's inclusion in the G1 cartoon:

Imagine how awesome that would have been. I have no idea why the Jumpstarters weren't included, but I have a feeling it may have to do with the constant bootlegging of this figure. Maybe Hasbro didn't want to advertise product that would help the bootleggers' sales.

The other tidbit I found was this concept art for the Pretenders. Apparently Twin Twist's art was used to show off how the Pretenders would work.

Pretender Twin Twist would be awesome

At any rate, Twin Twist certainly got used a lot in the IDW series "Last Stand of the Wreckers", a great mini-series. This series actually made me hate James Roberts and Nick Roche a bit because of the high causality rate. Still, it was a great story and did a lot to add to Twin Twist's status in the larger Transformer mythos. There was even a third party figure released recently.

Due to the sudden fame that Twin Twist was saddled with, I was worried that finding one would prove to be expensive. I didn't realize that Twin Twist was probably owned by every kid in the world and is easily available at cheap prices. One of my biggest losses in the past year was losing out on a MIB version at auction. I felt that $35 was a sufficient amount, but was still beat. Oh well.

As I stated earlier, Twin Twist features an auto transformation gimmick. Simply pull him back in vehicle mode, and he'll move and activate a lever on his chest that will cause him jump (hence the term Jumpstarter) and transform. There's a a lever on the back of his head that will allow you to adjust his balance so he can always land on his feet. It's pure awesome.

Vehicle mode is a Cybertronian twin-drill tank.

This is actually my third Twin Twist. My first one broke from over use, and the second got combined with a spare Topspin for some reason to form this thing:

It feels good to have this guy again. Now to see how long until I break him again.