It was inevitable that once a Masterpiece Soundwave was announced, a 3rd party toy company would appear to bring us the cassettes that were not slated for release.
So step forward Keiths Fantasy Club, or KFC- though not to be confused with the worlds leading provider of fried chicken. Keith has bought us some cool figures in the last year, with a few different cassettes, various versions of Perceptor and more recently the amazing looking Citizen Stack and Sencho Barbossa.
Citizen Stack is a figure I would dearly love to have, even just for a brief time, but alas it is out of my price range at the momenr. I really need a lottery win as I really want to add it to my collection and take lots of pictures of it :(
It looks like such a fun toy. Another one is KFC's take on Slamdance, the Autobot combiner cassettes which I really do need to find. Clearly I like Keith's designs more than I thought.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand and that is Bird Bomber. Based on the later G1 Cassette toys of Squawktalk and Beastbox who combined to form Squawkbox, KFC have produced a couple of figures that Takara are very unlikely to ever bother with.
So this is a great way to fill that burning gap on your Masterpiece shelf (said no one ever about Squawkbox), or more aptly just give you more play value from Soundwave.
The original Squawkbox was released in 1988, as the Transformers brand was slowing right down in terms of popularity and as such they did not appear in any of the cartoon series or even the original comics. Instead, their fictional appearances have been limited to brief cameos in IDW's various series.
So not a character everyone is crying out for then? Well, no not really, they are not one of the first names (or even one of the top 50) anyone thinks of when asked to name Transformers characters but they were cool tools, with an interesting combining gimmick. So actually, they are pretty cool.
KFC have had a dubious reputation for quality control in the past, but that is always going to be a peril of doing cassette size figures due to their tiny size. But lets see how these guys stand up.
Hit the button to see the pictures and read the review
Click here to see full review »