“Life is worth living only as long as there are enemies worth destroying.”
The original G1 Sixshot was described as “A vile, nasty murderous sort who carries out his job with ferocious intensity.” He remains to this day, my favorite one-robot-army and all around badass Decepticon. Hand-picked to be a Six-Phaser by Megatron himself along with Overlord and Black Shadow, the six-changer is known to be tireless and deadly efficient. However, that little redeeming quality of speaking well of those he’s sent to “the great junkyard in the sky” went a long way in shaping his character as having a sort of a samurai-ninja-like code of honor amidst all the destruction he caused.
There has been many iterations of Sixshot. The original one from back in the day was more or less a brick. Things have changed and there’s a couple out there that are very near masterpiece quality, but not from Hasbro or Takara. My choice was the GCreation GDW-03 Fuuma. No headmaster, no empty plastic legs, solid and all around amazing. I’ve had him for a bit enough to see that time has exposed one or two flaws that might make another collector reconsider obtaining this figure. But before we get to that, let’s see what we have in the box.
The figure itself is immensely posable. Make sure you bring out those heels, they’re almost entirely responsible for his balance. Besides his two hypersonic concussion blasters, there’s two small blades, two throwing stars and the most amazing thing: a samurai sword made of diecast steel with a sheath. Additionally you get a bunch of connectors that can be used to set the sword and sheath in several locations .
The hypersonic concussion blasters can be arranged in several places onto Sixshot but strangely enough, not on the wing tips (?). The grip can be folded inside the rifle, which can be a little bit of a pain to bring out. The barrel can be disconnected from the rest of the gun, which seems to imply you can reconfigure that into something else. I haven’t found anything you can do with the parts nor do I see any other connection ports that fit them. The ports on each side of the rifles can be pushed inwards, making me think that there’s more than… Nope, they just do exactly that. I think someone had an idea that was never completed here. I guess you can have Sixshot pretend he disassembles his guns for cleaning.
Now, about that sword…
The sword is probably one of the reasons I wanted this third party version. At the same time, you can’t just have him holding up to call the power of Greyskull. It’s heavy and you need to strategize if you’re going to display him with it. The sword can easily throw the six-changer off balance. He can hold it in his hand, but it will fall with time. Sixshot not only needs to close his fingers around it to keep it snug but you should consider leaning the tip against something else or resting the tip on the floor. I feel as time goes by, it might be hard for keep to hold a pose with it with just one hand.
Here you can see the rifles with the ports on the side pushed in. You’ll figure the tabs underneath can be used to bring them out again easily. The sword is not sharp but it can stab you real easily. Notice how the sheath has a small opening to fit a connector. I tend to use the same one everytime so that Sixshot can just wear the sword sheather on his waist. The rest of the weapons don’t have a tab to snap onto the hand, so they can just be held by the fingers.
And now… The alt modes. Sigh. This is work. GCreations’ Fuuma mimics all of the original modes from G1 Sixshot, but since the figure is meant primarily to look as a robot, there’s a level of complexity that almost seems uncanny. Some parts do have to turn around onto very stiff axis carefully. Some because you don’t want to hurry up and end up bending or breaking pieces and others because they expose sharp edges where you could cut yourself. Definitely a bit of a finicky transformation process.
The starfighter jet comes first.
I’d be fine if this was Sixshot’s only mode. Let’s be “real” here, he’s definitely not going to be a robot “in disguise” in most of his modes. This one is the one that is his primary mode of transportation. GCreation chose not to provide a way for the rifles to be stuck onto the wingtips (a misstep I think) but the compromise of them sticking to the sides is not too bad. I could’ve turned the intakes down so the wheels would not be prominent but I prefer them that way.
The armored carrier is next.
It’s always supposed to vaguely resemble a truck but it really doesn’t work. As in the original G1 Sixshot, the wings could do a better job if they were swung all the way to the back but in this iteration they do help cover a lot of the gaps between the main body and the arms.
Next up, the tank. Oh boy, the tank…
I know what you’re going to tell me. Yes, I forgot to swing out the mini-cannons from the legs. Additionally, GCreation did do right in allowing the rifles to attach to the sides, or to be precise as right as the pictures of G1 Sixshot did. The original G1 had holes inside the legs where you could fit the guns, but that was never illustrated in the cartoon or the instructions. You can’t really place the guns anywhere else here. Also, no cockpit for this thing. It really looks more like a gun emplacement or anti-aircraft cannons.
Now, GCreation has chosen to give the tank real rubber treads. As cool as that sounds, the problem is that thin treads do tend to dry up and crack up. GCreation provides two spares, but there’s four treads on Sixshot. I have two threads that have cracked up already and are falling off. I would’ve preferred just black plastic. The wheels also have real rubber threads but since they just need to keep a round shape it seems they’ll last longer. In the worst case scenario, I just won’t have any treads left in the toy. Collectors might consider this before buying. I can live without them when it comes to that.
No use delaying it any further. The winged wolf comes next.
Yeah, that’s just… Well, a robot wolf, I guess? It’s not a selling point, but it’s cool that it exists I guess. Moving on…
The gun.
At least this time I remembered to swing out the mini cannons. I really didn’t know how to take a picture of this mode so that it would look anything like a handheld weapon and not a stretched out robot. I should point out that the legs are heavy so although it kinda stays straight, eventually the joints are going to wear out and it will bend when you want to hold it like you would a gun. Definitely my less favorite mode, but now that we’re done we can go back to robot! Yay!
And now let’s compare him to the good ole’ G1 Sixshot!
Yes, G1 Sixshot was a brick… But you can see where GCreation got all the inspiration. The truth, is that they got very much the IDW aesthetic of the mighty Six-Phaser. You can see how dangerous Sixshot can be. The look is on the money.
Now before we wrap this up, a look at another tidbit that GCreation added that is certainly not canon. I almost forgot to show this feature. Take a look.
Chest missiles! Yes, a-la-Seeker! They could’ve just put stickers but no, you get physical rocket heads in there, distinctively painted. You can see the attention to detail that has gone into this figure and it’s very appreciated. You might also noticed that the wingtips up close are not stickers but painted on.
There’s actually more of those details in the figure altogether. The feet not only come out but have this raising lids to cover the gap with pistons painted on them. The skirt pieces that hide the leg joins are several pieces put together. The lines and details on the body match the old G1 Sixshot even in the back. Even his butt has those two circular things on top of the skirts. The level of detail is so great that it even seems unnecessary.
To recap, my biggest pet peeve is that the tank treads made of rubber will crack overtime. Next to that, the sword is too heavy so I’ve taken it off to prevent it wearing out its balance Everything else is so well detailed and matched to what Sixshot should be that I can’t think of a masterpiece more masterpiece than this one. It really doesn’t even need to transform.
In case you want to know how he measure against a seeker, say Starscream (Meteor) here’s a size comparison.
That will do for now.
Never Think Impossible 