Mostructor Part I - Slog

www.botchthecrab.com

Welcome to my first post that was influenced by what I read and see!  And as I stated towards the end of last year, the first three months' worth of posts would be dictated by my influences.  The decision to go ahead with Monstructor stems from flywheels doing his reviews on the Dinoforce figures, which are just recolors with different shells.  I've always wanted to get the rest of the Pretender Monsters, but I've just kept putting them off.  Reading flywheel's reviews gave me the push I needed to get off my duff.

Once I had the idea to complete the Pretender Monsters, I just kept an eye on eBay.  Generally, I'll find complete Monstructor's for closer to $350 or more, but I already owned a Wildfly, so I wasn't sure if getting a complete Monstructor would be necessary.  Then I started looking at prices for the individual figures.  Holy crikey!  Guess complete Monstructor it was going to be!  Besides, with the fact ol' Slog here is notorious for suffering from the ill effects of Gold Plastic Syndrome, I'd be getting a second one of him anyway.  You know, one to keep in Monstructor head form and the other to display in monster/robot mode.  Probably.  Enough of this.  Let's get to Slog.

TFWiki.net

 Here is Slog in his one fictional appearance in the Marvel comic, an issue titled "Rhythm of Darkness!".  Notice how he's still a short guy?  Then again, Jose Delbo didn't do Slog any favors with his art, but I digress.  "Rhythm of Darkness!" was just a plot device to get Galvatron to the present and took place in an alternate reality.  Which means that Slog wasn't even in the proper Transformer universe.  Does that make his appearance any less significant?  Was this appearance significant?

Slog has fared a lot better since those ignominious days at Marvel.  Slog has been featured quite a bit (some would say too much) as part of Monstructor in the IDW Transformer books.  I don't recall him having anything resembling a personality in the books, much less saying anything, but he's there.  Other than that, Slog hasn't gotten any recognition or favor from anyone.  

Like Arkvander, I had been toying around with the idea of using black backgrounds on my photos.  I got the inspiration from brr-icy.  His Flickr page is just chock full of beautiful portraits of Transformers and they're all on a gorgeous black background.  Turns out he's better at this than I am.  Figures.  Anyway, the Pretender Monsters will be the only shots I do on a black palette because I lack the time and let's face it, skill, to do black photos justice.

Above, you'll find Slog's Pretender shell.  I don't know what it's supposed to be.  A chibi demon?  No one seems to really be sure.  It is actually reminiscent of a Todd McFarlane design.  He'd be right at home with Clown in the Spawn comics.

Turn out the lights, it's time for Slog

As evidenced by the picture above, Slog's accessories peg neatly into his backpack.  I'm not so sure that I have the head on there correctly, but it works.  It's a nice feature.

"Why is everything upside down?"

When I got Slog, he was inside his shell and I had a helluva time getting him out.  I was super worried that the seller would ship him inside his shell, and he did.  Talk about frustrating.  I eventually got Slog to come out of his shell (hah!) without any breakage or too much cursing.  Slog will not be going back into his chibi demon shell.  Ever.

What is this?

If I didn't know what Slog's Pretender shell was supposed to be, I certainly don't know what the inner robot turns into.  It's a short boxy thing with long arms. 

This ill-defined, squat thing just demonstrates his real function - forming Monstructor's chest and head.  There really isn't anything to add about the monster mode, so we'll go into the robot mode.

I still can't get over how small this guy is.  Really, how small all of the Pretender Monsters are.  At least things are a little more defined in robot mode.  You can tell that he's actually a robot, so that's good.

There are a lot of pictures in this post, but flywheels suggested that I take lots a pictures as I probably won't ever touch these guys again due to the GPS issues.  And it was a good suggestion.  So far, Slog doesn't have any GPS breakage that I can see, but we all know what's going to eventually happen.  The clock is ticking it's slow tick of death.  If only there were a way to fix GPS.  Telethon, anyone?

So concludes the first chapter of my Pretender Monsters reviews.  Next up, Bristleback!  Huh, I just realized that I have a theme month going.  I'll think of a title later.