Review: Kingdom Golden Disk Collection Puffer & Road Ranger

 Sometimes Transformers fiction goes a bit multiversal just to market some toys, and I love it. In 2003 we had the Universe storyline which saw Optimus Primal leading Autobots and Decepticons from various Transformers continuities to defeat the forces of Unicron and prevent Unicron's resurrection. This also slightly lead into the Cybertron storyline of Transformers Collectors Club which started a whole universe hopping storyline following a group of similarly coloured characters who, spoilers, where the components of Nexus Prime. Also in the Collectors Club you had the TransTech continuity which featured a Cybertron, Called the Axiom Nexus, where various Transformers characters from multiple continuities were gathered under the rule of the TransTech natives. There was even the ending of the Armada comic which saw G1 styled characters battle it out with the Armada cast, Alex Milne recently revealed on Twitter that IDW were to end their comic with a multiversal storyline involving nearly every francise of the past 38 years, and, stepping away from comics, there was the video game "Rise of the Dark Spark" which saw the War for Cybertron video game cast cross into the Michael Bay movies!

Transformers peaked at this moment

Recently though, as in Summer 2021, Hasbro released the "Golden Disk Collection" as a subline to "War for Cybertron: Kingdom". This was a 4 set subline, which had a storyline told through the marketing material, which took place in alternate variation of the Beast Wars timeline, where the blast that turned certain Beast Wars characters into their Transmetal forms, instead killed off all the characters bar Terrorsaur and Tigertron. Terrorsaur survived because he was inside the Volcano at the time, and was supposed to be fused with the Lava which is to explain why the toy has animation accurate colours. Tigertron was knocked unconcsious by the blast and mutated, changing him from a white tiger to an orange tiger and mutate his robot face into the mutant mask that the original toy had, as a homage to the package art of Tigertron on the original Beast Wars release, which can be seen on my Tigertron reissue review here.

Both shown here because I probably won't pick them up

When Tigertron comes too, he has no memory of who he was or what had transpired and Terrorsaur convinces Tigertron that he is Terrorsaurs subordinate. With all the other bots dead Terrorsaur get his hands on the Golden Disk and is able to rewrite the future to his suiting. That is until our heroes step in, who thanks to the energy of the explosion, have been ripped out from various times and brought before Terrorsaur and Tigertron, and must prevent them from using the Golden disk for EVIL! And today we will be looking at two of them, Puffer and Road Ranger.

On the front of the packet we have this very nice corner of the Golden Disk, as was one of the selling points of the line, if you buy all four sets you can put them together and have this Golden Disk artwork. I think this is very cool, and can make a complete collection look very nice, but it won't get me to buy all 4 in the set, especially with a very simple art piece to bring together.  Back of the box we have the usual product shots of the toys inside the box as well as list of contents and legalities in various languages. I have to say that I am disappointed the story of these characters and the collection are told through the online market place descriptions and not on the toy box or with the old pack-in comics that you used to get, you don't even get the pack-in Future card that present with the rest of the Kingdom toyline.

Inside the box we have our two heroes, Puffer and Road Ranger, who have an interesting story as to how they got here. Road Ranger has been ripped out of the GoBots universe and brought to this alternate universe Beast Wars and from the G1 Universe, Huffer and Pipes were both pulled through and the energy from the blast fused them together to form Puffer. So let's have a look at our two unlikely heroes, starting with Road Ranger.

Road Ranger here is a black and orange repaint of the Kingdom Huffer mould with a new head sculpt to represent that of the character from the Timelines fiction. I think this is quite a good toy, and the change in colours really suit the toy. The use of different shades of orange really highlight the details of the sculpt and help add volume to the toy. 

Accessories wise, Road Ranger comes with a really nice highly detailed sci-fi blaster that I would expect the likes of X-Men's Cable to carry, and the second accessory is a small riot shield, which looks great and the detailing is fantastic, I especially like that there is a gap in the shield for Road Ranger to look through but still see.

Up next we have Puffer, and this was the main appeal of this set for me. Puffer is a repaint of the Kingdom Pipes toy, which is a retool of the Kingdom Huffer toy, in the colours of the European G1 Pipes toy, which was a white and blue repaint of the G1 Huffer toy and not the US G1 Pipes toy for some reason. Puffer, like Road Ranger also has a new head sculpt compared to that of his Kingdom counterpart. 

The main appeal to me for this toy over that of the Kingdom Pipes is simple, I prefer this colour scheme a lot more to Pipes and I think it's a better looking head sculpt, The visor just looks better than the split red eyes to me. I fell the white torso really makes the toy stand out and pairs really well with the light blue of the legs and back pack, and because this is based on the colour scheme of a previous Pipes release, I will be using Puffer here as my Pipes stand-in for my collection. Puffers only accessories are black blasters that can be attached to his wrists or used in his hands depending on how you wise to display them.

In terms of articulation, due to the nature of the toys, they both are as posable as the other, and both up to the usual standard that you would expect from mainline Transformers toys. Both have ankle pivots, elbow bends, upper arm rotation, rotation at the shoulders, forward and back at the hips with them almost able to do the splits and, due to transformation, a greater than 90 bend at the knee and both heads are on ball joints but not a great range of looking up and down. The one thing Puffer has over Road Ranger that I instinctively noticed is that, due to transformation, you can have Puffers Backpack sit in the same manner as Road Rangers or you can rotate it round to be less visable, which is the suggested way.

Transformation with both of these is very much the same, except with the extra rotation on Puffer if you flipped the Backpack around. Shoulders pop down and the chest leans forward for the front wheels to flip out to where the shoulders were, which is a very nice piece of engineering. The arms are then locked into place on the hips to form the exhausts and the cab slides back to lock into place. Now that the front of the lorry is formed the legs are then clicked together, the base of the feet fold forward to form the bed of the lorry, then the legs fold back on themselves to complete the lorry.

Viola, two small little lorries ready to haul and they are adorable. The colours of both of them really suit this alt mode, especially on Road Ranger, the black with orange just has a very menacing feel to it. Honestly love the design of both these little fellas. Due to both originating from the Kingdom Huffer mould, they can both haul Earthrise/Kingdom Optimus Prime's Trailer, as well as Legacy Laser Optimus Prime's/Scourge's Tanker Trailer. While in alt mode, Puffer can store his blasters either on the bed of the lorry or they can be stored on the side as extensions of his exhausts. Road ranger, on the other hand, has interesting weapon storage. The gun Road Ranger came with can split in half and attach by tabs to the sides of the shiild. This can then be attached to the bed of the lorry to create a flat bed lorry look.

Overall these are two magnificent toys that, at time of writing, aren't going for too bad a price. I highly recommend picking them up if you haven't as they are just fantastic to play with and I really enjoy transforming them, it's such a simple enjoyable and well designed procedure. 

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Images used from the Transformers Armada comic belong to Takara Tomy and/or Hasbro as well as the associated publishers and artists and are used in this toy review for reference under "Criticism, review and reporting current events" exception to copyright laws in the UK.