Grapple With Thee

 

Another one of the Earthrise Transformers my wife got me for my birthday was Grapple. I was really excited to get him as the Grapple/Inferno mold holds a special place in my heart. I just love it, know what I mean? With Grapple, the toy designers started with the original Diaclone toy and worked up. He looks and feels just like the original toy upgraded. Which I just love. I've heard the complaints that newer Generation toys are basically G1 with knees... which is the idea...

Grapple turns into his traditional mobile crane alt mode. It looks great and like Starscream everything just went together naturally. It's really awesome just how good this toy is. Great robot mode, fun truck mode. I'm just a little amazed just how great Earthrise is turning out to be. There's been homages to G1 toys before... but these just NAIL it. I used bold there, because I meant it.

One could argue that the Masterpeice toys do it better, and while they look a lot nicer (they're like a hundred something dollars, they should), I'm way more impressed with these. The transformations just seem like a natural evolution of the original designs. If I'm buying an upgraded version of a old toy, I  want it to feel like the old toy upgraded.

A nice touch is the additional rigging equipment that can attached in both modes. My brother is a crane operator and I remember watching these in use while giving him a ride to work when his truck was broken down. It's just an extra bit of play value that adds a bit of realism to the crane. Not to mention, the original Grapple/Inferno mold had additional parts you could use in place of the hands in robot mode. It's nice to see a throwback to that. There's a nozzle attachment on the side of the truck that can also be used in this manner... which I didn't take a picture of. That gives you a much more traditional Grapple with his nozzle hand. Man, I love this toy.