TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Name: Blight
Allegiance: Predacon
Function: Savage Destroyer
Size Class: Legion Class
Accessories: “Affliction Hammer”

Ah, the new Terrorcons. No one would’ve guessed that Hasbro would make entirely new redesigns of the Terrorcons that were still faithful to their original G1 designs… that still retained their ability to combine. But with the Beast Hunters subline coming up, and with the theme of the new Predacon faction centering on dragons… well, it was ingenuous for Hasbro at that point. Twinstrike (a new representation of G1’s Sinnertwin) was a great announcement, but my favourite Terrorcon design was always Blot.

Why Blot? I’m not sure. I think it’s his bio. Blot had this hilarious bio that described him as a stupid brute (no surprise, considering his name and look), and is extremely disgusting and dirty. I remember bios describing him as oozing random fluids from joints, and his teammates don’t exactly like combining with him… a trait shared with the Seacon Skalor, except that Blot was dumber, more brutish, and had an inferiority complex because of that.

Also, Blot transformed into… something. While the marvels of Generation One engineering don’t exactly allow for a lot of details, the other Terrorcons at least resembled some kind of mythical monster. Hun-Grr and Sinnertwin were both twin-headed dragons, albeit different-looking ones. Cutthroat was a roc, a pterodactyl or some sort of similar giant bird of prey. Rippersnapper was some sort of landshark, or at least a lumpy tyrannosaurus-shark hybrid. Blot was… Blot turned into a huge black box with a protruding nose-head thing, giant purple claw-like hands, and weird-looking purple feet. I’m serious, just go look him up. Over the years people have described him as an ogre, as a mole, as King Kong, as the Creature from Black Lagoon… I’ve even read someone describe him as a ‘nose monster’. Whatever you wanted to call Blot, there’s really not much hint to what he turned into.

I think it’s the sheer absurdity that made me like Blot. And he was on the shortlist of the Generation One toys I would like to own because of how stupid-looking yet adorable his toy looked.

So, anyway, flash forward to 2013 and we’ve got the new Terrorcons. Some of the Terrorcons had to be renamed for trademark reasons… the awesome Sinnertwin became the equally awesome Twinstrike, Cutthroat obtained the name Windrazor from Hasbro’s list of ‘names we can randomly slap on any toy’, and Blot was renamed ‘Blight’.

Blight is a name first used for one of the Combaticon wannabes in Transformers: Energon, and then reused for a glorious day-glo green Minicon motorcycle from Universe which I actually own. It’s actually a fitting name for Blot. Not quite as catchy as Blot, but similar enough and fitting enough that I do not mind.

Beast Mode:
This new take on Blot turns him into a ‘dragon’, according to the instructions, but since they call everything a dragon these days, I’m not buying it. As far as I can tell, Blight’s head seems to be inspired somewhat by something reptilian like a crocodile, or maybe some kind of ugly fish monster. It’s got a toothy maw instead of a radiator nose this time, as well as a crest of fins or spines or whatever the hell those are running across the center of his head. He might or might not have eyes, he certainly has a lot of mechanical depressions, any or none which could be eyes. In any case, while Blight has far more defined features to him than ‘box with a nose’, it’s still pretty vague what he is. Excellent.

Anyway, Blight’s robot mode still retains Blot’s massive bulky girth and the general silhouette, although this time it’s not by simply being a wide box. Blight is wide because of his more pronounced, large gorilla-arm things which end in a five-fingered clawed hand similar to that of BW Dinobot – three fingers on the top, two on the bottom. It’s a similar configuration to Beast Fire Predaking, and it’s one that I do not mind.

Blight is mainly dark purple and lavender, although the colours are spread across his body with far more variation than the original Blot. Blight has also added yellow to his paint scheme, namely his head-spines, part of his stomach, as well as spikes jutting out of his elbows and thighs. As you can see from the pictures, it’s actually a pretty busy and messy colour scheme, and it’s not as well distributed as Twinstrike, Windrazor or Rippersnapper’s are.

Blight is articulated in beast mode, and although he has more joints than most of his fellow new Terrorcons except for maybe Windrazor, Blight can’t really utilize most of them. The reason being he’s pretty front-heavy, so the burly arms have to stay close to the ground so he doesn’t do a faceplant. His shoulders are on ball joints, his elbows allow rotation (which is kind of awkward with the lower arm already jutting at an angle from the joint) and the claws can open and close. His thighs are on ball joints. He really can’t do much without falling over.

Blight’s feet (which again look nonspecific) are bad. Not because they are bad feet, but because they’ve got Blight’s robot hands jutting out of them for no particular reason at all. It really shouldn’t be that hard to incorporate a cavity for the fists to disappear into, or have the beast claws be part of a massive gauntlet that will overshadow the robot fists the way Rippersnapper or Windrazor handled their robot hands. No, they had to have the robot fists – lavender robot fists, mind you – jut out of entirely dark purple legs.

It’s also hard to see since Blight’s default pose is leaning forwards like a gorilla, but if you look in his chest area, just under the head, there are two huge chunks of hollow space, a bit of a far cry from the original Blot’s huge solid box deal.

He’s also kind of unstable in beast mode, so watch out.

So overall, Blight has what I think one of the weaker beast modes amongst the Terrorcon set. It’s not the weakest (that spot, I think, is reserved to Hun-Grrr) but it’s still pretty poorly done. Which is a shame, since I really liked Blot.

Robot Mode:
Blight’s robot mode is a fair bit better. The transformation is pretty well-done, although personally I would’ve wished for less complex steps which would probably eliminate the front-heavy problems the beast mode has. Blight’s colour scheme is mostly the same, although it’s much tidier here with the ugly crocodile piranha dragon head thing out of the way. He’s mostly dark blue on the upper torso and the large arms, as well as the lower legs. Lavender colours the thighs, fists and feet, as well as some nice detailing on the chest. Yellow colour most of the same places that it did in the beast mode, as well as a Predacon insignia on his right chest. His eye-visor is red and his faceplate is silver.

His headsculpt is a different from the original Blot’s robot head, which is a surprise since all the other Terrorcons have near-identical ones to their G1 counterparts. He’s got a head that could be described as ‘Soundwave with a fat chin’. I’m not complaining, the smallish head and the expression on the face really give out the sense of an idiot brute instead of the faceless manipulator that is Soundwave.

In robot mode Blight still looks like a gorilla, albeit with the beast mode legs as hands and the beast mode hands as feet. His articulation is more or less the same, albeit reversed. And you can kind of do a little nodding gesture with the head. In a sense his robot mode actually resembles his original beast mode much closer due to the colour scheme and the general lack of features. Not sure if it’s just my personal attachment to Blot’s ridiculous beast mode, but whatever.

Blight looks like he could really do some damage to robots similar to his size, which is fitting because his new function is… uh… ‘savage destroyer’. Right.

Blight comes with the ‘Affliction Hammer’, more or less identical to Twinstrike’s hammer accessory except for a slightly-different shade in gray. I’m not sure what the hammer is afflicted with. Blight’s body odour mayhaps? Blight holds the hammer at the very tip of the handle, which is definitely not how you hold a hammer, but maybe no one told Blight that. He can also hold the hammer at the business end, which, again, isn’t how you hold a hammer.

Also, Blight turns into one of Abominus’ legs. I really do hope those beast-claws of his can support all of Abominus’ weight without the three-clawed half popping off under the weight. It could probably happen.

There’s really not much you can do with Blight’s robot mode, but it’s kind of fun to fiddle with. Despite there not being anything special about him, I just like Blight.

Marks out of ten for the following:

Transformation Design: 6/10 Not the most sophisticated or most well thought-of transformation scheme, but one that suffices.

Durability: 8/10 He’s not a big box anymore, but Blight is still pretty solid.

Aesthetics: 5/10 I really don’t like the look of his new beast mode, but his new robot mode I like. So, uh… an average score, I guess?

Articulation: 6/10 Blight’s got average articulation for a toy his size, I suppose.

Fun: 7/10 He doesn’t look like it, but he’s a damn fun little toy to fiddle around with.

Price/Value: 5/10 Legion class toys are bloody expensive. Blight just so happen to be one of those toys that are worth it only if you like the character.

Overall: 6/10 Blight’s not the best toy out there, especially compared to guys like Twinstrike or Windrazor. He’s not especially terrible, but he’s not the best that Hasbro has to offer. He does make a really nice new version of Blot, although I really have to start getting used to that… that whatever the hell that beast mode face is supposed to be based on. I like Blight, but he’s nothing special unless you really like Terrorcons like me.

Not really sure what to write for this one, to be honest. He's very much average. He's not good, but decidedly not bad either. Might be because it's like one in the morning while I write this.