Whirl

An insufferable ass who loves to pick a fight, Whirl is the mono-eyed instigator of dubious and harmful actions and a wielder of similarly veined thoughts. A spark filled with hate and anger, Whirl chooses to live life flippantly and without care making him of unsound mind. But when killing is in order, Whirl is your ‘bot.

With this, Hasbro gives us Whirl from the Hasbro animated television show entitled The Transformers. A cross between his G1 Dorvack toy and his newest IDW comic rendition, Whirl is an unorthodox and weird toy, but one that is sure to please any fan.

Let’s review:

Packaging:
Whirl is encased in the new Voyager class packaging with a great open faced design and some stellar Nick Roche inspired art on the front:

The back includes all your tech specs and biography:

Aesthetics:
Whirl is the most pleasant shades of blue which play well together and with the smattering of blacks, reds, and yellows present as well. The yellow—though in a small amount relatively speaking—screams on this toy and is such a great offset. The colors are flat and none too wild, but this really makes Whirl look both like a toy and as if he were from a comic:

The paint on more than a few spots could have been tighter; overspray is somewhat apparent on a few spots on my Whirl, and this may be true for most. It doesn’t detract much from the toy, but it’s still notable.

The sculpt on Whirl is filled with detail. There are grooves and bolt heads and even some mechanical detail worked into this mold. Not a lot is left flat. These details also catch light very well.

The sculpt of Whirl is a bit of a mix-and-match. While on an overall viewpoint Whirl is supposed to be a throw back to his G1 Dorvack toy, he also possesses traits from his IDW appearance as well as traits unknown to both iterations. Though I would have preferred this Whirl to be more like his IDW appearance—much like the Springer that came out earlier—this Whirl is still great and serves as a wonderful update to the original toy.

The face on this guy is excellent, just a perfect encapsulation of everything we know as Whirl, insanity and all.

Whirl’s Copter mode is equally great. Sharing the aforementioned detail and colors, it stands out and looks just as good as the robot mode. The proportions are good and the copter is satisfying.

The only thing negative to say about it is that the thighs leave a noticeable gap under his cockpit. Besides that, everything is good: both propellers spin freely and well and the cockpit even opens!

Articulation:
The articulation on Whirl is somewhat of a mixed bag, ranging from excellent to finicky to useless.

Being of such an extremely unorthodox design, Whirl doesn’t have some articulation we’ve come to expect, notably ankle anything and wrist articulation. His backwards knees also make it hard to make any real poses; however, being so different in design you can simply spin Whirl’s legs around at his thigh swivel and have a normal facing knee and not have it look any more out of place.

Whirl’s elbows are double jointed and have a swivel. These along with his semi-universal shoulders allow his arms to be wildly poseable and emotional. The shoulders are finicky due to the transformation and only allow the hinge to move in one direction; repositioning can be a bother.

Whirl’s claw hands open and close and his head sports and ball joint and neck lever allowing him to be quite emotive. . . even with a monoeye.

Whirl stands at 7 inches tall

Accessories:
Whirl comes with the following:
– Photon Beam Rifle
– Missile pod
– Shell Cannon
– Null Ray
– Sticker sheet

His weapons are molded in flat black and some—Null Ray and shell cannon—are near exactly the same as his G1 weapons. They can be clipped all over his body via pegs or clip points and can even combined together.

The stickers are another nice G1 shoutout and can really change the flavor of Whirl. Made from a thick, clear vinyl, these stickers look and feel great and add a lot to Whirl’s overall dynamic. Printed with an astounding DPI, most all the words on the stickers are legible.

Gimmicks:
The main gimmick of a transformer is to transform, and whirl does that quite well. Not too intensive, Whirl’s transformation is fun and smooth. Everything is tab centric which holds his alt and robot mode in place very well and makes his feel solid. Great tolerances an expertly engineered, everything sits where it should and leaves no questions about quality.

Two words of warning about the transformation:
– be gentle with the upper knee joint on Whirl; it’s stiff and can be torqued easily thus leading to a possible break.
– after stickers are applied, take note when transforming to note pinch and scrape said stickers; some of them are left between two parts folded together after transformation.

Another really cool gimmick about Whirl is his official Gerwalk mode (here called Heloped)! It’s like Hasbro knew we were gonna do it anyway, so they engineered one in there. Achieved with a sliding mechanism used solely for this mode, you’re left with an ED-209-esque walker mode.

It’s a nice little extra that makes Whirl just that much cooler.

Whirl has some downright electric light piping:

This effect can actually be negated via a cover on the back of his head. It can be moved up by pulling his antenna forward.

Closing remarks:
Whirl might be super unvincible, but he’s super worth it.
Pick this guy up if you get the chance.
Having great colors, a refreshing sticker throwback, and just being plain unconventional in aesthetics and design, Whirl has staggering shelf presence. Playable with a great transformation, Whirl makes a good toy and a nice addition to your other 30th anniversary Voyagers.