Anime Devastator

Have you ever purchased a figure and instantly regretted it?  To be perfectly honest, I've never regretted a purchase.  Ever.  That is until I purchased Anime Devastator, Encore 20A.  As soon as he shipped, I wanted to cancel the order, but it was too late.  It's not that it's a horrible release, not by a long shot.  I just don't see the point, I guess.

In 2011, TakaraTomy released Devastator as the 20th Encore figure.  He was apparently reverse engineered from a set of existing toys since the original mold had been lost to time.  Or KO manufacturers.  I picked up this release since it was easier to get this than to track down decent Constructicons at good prices.  Fast forward to 2013 and TakaraTomy decided to jazz up Devastator with a more yellow version of Devastator replete with a new head sculpt that better emulated his look from the cartoon.  Oh, and Mixmaster would now feature a purple mixing drum.  Imaginatively titled Encore 20A - Anime Devastator, this release seemed to be met with a solid "Ho-Hum" from everyone.  Especially me.

I'm still not sure what prompted me to pull the trigger on this purchase.  Once I got him and opened him up, I just put the decals on and combined the Constructicons into Devastator and put him with the other Devastator.  It turns out that there are quite a few differences besides the head and drum.

Above, you can check out the differences in the heads.  The newer head is up front.  It does look better, I suppose.  I guess he should be tearing down Autobot City.

 Anime Devastator features black forearms as opposed to the purple of regular Devastator.

Long Haul got some paint apps on the front of his truck grill.  He also got his headlights painted.

Mixmaster has the purple drum, plus red eyes.  The silver is absent from his forehead, however.

Scrapper has a more defined head thanks to the paint apps.

Bonecrusher has red eyes and his face is better defined thanks to the application of silver.

Ditto for Scrapper.

Hook has red eyes.  His head looks a lot better.

I think that my biggest problem with this release is that I feel as though TakaraTomy should have just done this release over the original Encore release.  It's just superfluous, I guess.  I'll be more positive on my next post, I promise.